


The Verge

by Bullfinch



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, Magic, Monsters, POV First Person, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2018-04-12 11:17:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4477265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bullfinch/pseuds/Bullfinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So a magician, a werewolf, and a weapons expert walk into a giant fucking mess</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“You sure you’ll be all right?”

I groan, flopping back on the bed. “Mom, please _,_ I’ve been sitting around correcting Spanish homework for two weeks. Just let me get out there and _do_ something.”

She sighs, a rush of static over the phone. “Okay, Del, but that ankle starts bothering you again you stay in the car, you understand?”

I’m a twenty-five year old man and capable of making those decisions for myself but I guess, being my mom, she’s contractually obligated to say things like that. “Yeah, yeah. What’s the job?”

“River hulk.”

I hear the grimace in her voice. With good reason. Those things are scary as fuck, not to mention hard to kill. “Are...we gonna have help?”

“Yeah, there’s another guy coming along.”

 _“One_ guy? That’s—uh, not a lot of backup.”

“He’ll do. Just—ah, I’ll let Ed explain when you get there. Be _careful,_ Del.”

“I always am.” Not strictly true or, well, even close to true. But what else am I gonna say?

“All right. I’ll talk to you later.”

I chuck my phone on the desk and rise, rotating my ankle. Still a twinge here and there but it’s fine. Paying the bills is boring as shit. I want to get out there and do some good.

———

The state park sign is a little overgrown for the early summer but I spot it easy enough and pull off into the dirt lot. Ed’s truck is there, and when she sees me come in she hops out of the cab.

Nobody else here today. Too hot, maybe. I don't care about that right now. Too ready to out there and get my hands dirty. I park the car and come over. Ed looks pissed. There’s another door slamming from the other side of the cab, which must be the other guy.

“Hey, Del,” she says. “Your ankle okay?”

“Fine. So…river hulk, huh? What’s the plan?”

Ed jerks her head. “Him.”

The guy comes around the truck.

He’s beautiful. Not stop-in-your-tracks beautiful but the more I stare at him the more beautiful he gets. Not very tall—Ed’s height, maybe five eight—but he’s got a well-kept beard over a kind of blunt, heavy face, and waves of dirty blonde hair on top of his head, though the sides are shaved closer. He’s also pretty jacked under that white t-shirt. I try to say hello but my jaw has dropped and all that comes out is “huh.” He watches me with brown eyes so light they’re almost gold.

“He’s a werewolf,” Ed interjects.

I take a reflexive step back. The guy winces. “Kind of.”

 _“Kind of?”_ I blurt out.

“Okay, fine,” Ed concedes. “Half a werewolf.”

“A werewolf fucked my mom,” the guy explains.

That was blunt. I’m shaking my head. “No. That’s impossible. Monsters can’t reproduce with humans.”

“Yeah, I know.”

I stare at him, waiting for things to make sense. Ed glances over. “What’s your mom again? Shapeshifter?”

“Yeah.”

At last. Everything’s starting to fall into place. “Your parents were both monsters.”

“I’m Jesse, by the way.” He sticks out his hand.

Tentatively I reach out and shake it. “Del.”

His grip is firm but not crushing, and his hands are a little calloused. I feel like there are a few things I should have gotten out of the way first. “So, werewolves…kill people.”

“Yeah.” He lets go.

“Do you…kill people?”

“No.” He turns and starts heading for the woods. “It sucks.”

Ed watches him go with folded arms. “Where the fuck did you find this guy?!” I hiss.

“I didn’t fuckin’ find him, your senile-ass grandfather found him!” she hisses back.

“Well—do you _know_ him? Is he gonna murder us as soon as we look away?”

“I worked with him a couple times. Didn’t fuckin’ like it, but we lived.”

“You got questions, all you need to do is ask,” Jesse calls over his shoulder.

Seems he has pretty good hearing. Ed grabs a duffel out of the bed. I’ve already got my backpack. We follow him to the edge of the lot and into the treeline.

It’s almost noon and pretty hot already. Ed’s in a tank top, which is smart. I’m suffering. The woods aren’t that dense so the shade helps but not that much; sunlight splashes down through the trees, making me squint as we turn right and head off the dirt path. The leaves are bright green, still growing. Jesse walks with surety. Apparently he knows where we’re going.

The moon was new the night before last, so at the very least I think we can probably take him if he tries to kill us. Maybe. I know how werewolves work but we’ve never actually killed a shapeshifter. From what I remember, they’re supposed to be nonviolent. Werewolves are really violent, though, so maybe they cancel each other out. “Hey,” I say. “So, uh, what do you do?”

“You mean professionally or in my spare time?” Jesse replies.

Sarcasm. Great. “I mean do you, like…turn into a wolf-man and stuff.”

“Not really. I can grow teeth and claws.”

Well, that doesn’t sound that scary. “Okay. And do you shapeshift?”

Then Jesse’s gone and a wolf is trotting through the trees ahead of me.

It happens so fast I don’t see the transformation, which is a shame. It’s not really a _wolf,_ I guess. As far as I know they don’t get that big. He’s gotta be at least three feet at the shoulder, closer to three and a half, with black fur with sprays of tan at his ruff and back. He pauses and turns, blinking at me with big brown eyes.

Then Jesse the (beautiful) man is back and he heads forward again. “I can do that.”

“Uh huh.”

“But mostly what I can do is take hits. So let me handle the heavy lifting when it shows up.”

“Don’t know why Niles called me and Del in at all,” Ed mutters. “Can’t you just kill the fuckin’ thing?”

“Probably. If I’m sloppy it might get away, though. I’m at kind of a low ebb right now.”

I nod. “The moon.”

Jesse glances over his shoulder. “Yeah.”

“I brought some stuff that might help,” I tell him, and reach around to my backpack.

“Besides the paintball guns?”

Those are in Ed’s bag. “Yeah. Built a new spell. I’ve never tested it before, but, well, it might work.”

“That’s encouraging.”

Ed chuckles. I shoot her a glare.

The ground gets soggier. Jesse navigates through it, planting his feet on rocks and tufts of yellow grass. This looks like river hulk territory, and Ed and I share a nervous look. “You know where this thing is?” she says.

“I think it’s nearby.”

“How can you tell? Can you smell it?” I ask.

“No. It smells like swamp and we’re in a swamp,” Jesse answers. “I can feel it. Just not that well. Moon’s weak.”

“What do you mean, ‘feel’ it?” He probably thinks I’m annoying but I don’t really give a shit. No one understands monsters, but I want to. I want to know.

He rubs his forehead. “We can all feel each other. It’s, ah…it’s hard to explain. There’s a…a place at the back of my mind where—“ Jesse halts. “Oh. Back up.”

It takes me a moment to register but then I start backing up and a second later the ground starts rumbling. Jesse stays right where he is, balanced on a tall tuft of grass.

The river hulk is rising out of the ground.

Not so much climbing out of it as built from it, the mud sucked toward her and piling up to form her body, like a mudslide in reverse. Two slick grey stones poke out to form her eyes, and a gaping hole beneath for her mouth. Phragmites sprout from her head, feathery and stiff. She lets out a gurgling series of chirps and buzzes like a chorus of peepers and red-winged blackbirds are trapped inside her.

I call her “she” because she’s pregnant. Her belly is bulging and round. “Fuck,” I whisper, retreating very slowly, half because the terrain is unstable and half because this is fascinating. The river hulk is enormous. As the mud gets sucked in, she just keeps getting bigger. Jesse’s shoulders rise and slump again in what I can imagine is a resigned sigh.

Then he jumps at her face.

That’s when I start to back off for real. I do not want to get hit by a wayward swipe of her arm. Even getting clipped would be enough to kill me—those limbs are basically liquid cement, and I do not have a powerful werewolf body, I have a weak fleshy human body that is not very difficult to crush for something like a river hulk. And then she would take my corpse and smush it up and pack it into the wall of her home with the corpses of all her other victims.

As they do.

Ed is already headed for higher ground—there’s not much, but she’s spotted a rise in the forest floor and I follow her, slinging my backpack off my shoulders. The duffel bag thuds to the leaves, and Ed yanks the zipper open. Two paintball guns. She starts to load one double-quick. I dig in my backpack and pull out what I need.

There’s a big flat rock jutting out of the dirt so I spread the sheet of paper out there and pop the top off the Tupperware of ink, scramble down and grab a nice handful of watery mud and throw it in there to add some oomph. Mix it up with a thick paintbrush and get my thoughts in order.

I stole this spell. I steal every spell, because best guess right now is magic works through tradition and belief and I’m just one guy, I can’t come up with hundreds of years of certainty and devotion all by myself. So I stole the components of this spell—today from the symbology of an indigenous Central American population. Hoping it still works because we’re not in Central America, we’re in Tennessee, but I had a good feeling about the angle.

There’s a snarl from up ahead. Jesse’s lain out in the swamp, pushing himself to his feet The river hulk heaves an arm into the air and Jesse’s legs pump. He gets out of the way just in time as her limb smashes down, and then he’s going for her face again. His hand scores a thick gouge out of it, tearing away her eye. She hoots in—I don’t know. Anger, pain, displeasure. Something.

It’s hard not to watch it. Like witnessing two apex predators fight to the death. Jesse’s trying to clamber up over her shoulder but her shoulder’s made of mud and anyway, she’s swiveling around in an attempt to dislodge him. He slides down her arm but then surges up and manages to get onto her back. Then he’s digging and digging—is this gonna be over already?

One of those sludgy arms whips up and bashes into his side. He flies fifteen feet through the air and skids to a stop in the mud. Holy shit. The hulk lumbers toward him. He’s not moving.

A _crack_ from beside me. Ed’s paintball gun. A splash of neon pink appears on the hulk’s back. Don’t know why they hate paint so much but they do. She whirls, gurgling at us.

Okay. Time to start working. I begin to write.

The hardest part is the disputes in translation. I use as wide a range of sources as I can find, but even so there’s usually at least a couple interpretations that prevail, and I just have to go with the one I agree with the most. Pronouncing the spell isn’t super easy either, although Youtube is helpful and practice is essential. As I’m muttering to myself my knee starts to sink into the dirt. Because it’s turning to mud underneath me. Whoops. Not specific enough. I do a little improvisation and reorder some things and stop sinking. My head pounds, and the pins and needles are next, shooting all the way down to my fingers and toes. Then they start prickling behind my eyes too, which is really unpleasant. It’s hard to breathe.

“You got it yet?!” Ed watches the hulk, tense but steady. “Cutting it kinda close!”

I shoot her a look with watering eyes and keep going. The hulk is still trundling toward us. Ed drops the paintball gun and goes for her machete. Great. We have to hand-to-hand this thing, our chances are not good. I am in fact almost done with the spell, but whether or not it’ll actually do anything remains to be seen.

The last symbol. I put down the final strokes, which should be what draws it all together, and look up, swiping at my eyes. Ideally the hulk will dissolve into muddy water.

She doesn’t do that. She does gurgle again and kind of slump. I’d call that a middling success. Of course, a middling success doesn’t mean shit when a river hulk is five yards away and pissed off at you for painting her pink. “Fuck,” Ed mumbles, and lifts her machete.

The river hulk moans and sits back. Jesse appears on her shoulders, digging in the back of her neck. She tries to reach up for him, but her arm begins to fall apart as it rises into the air. Oh, I think that’s my spell. That’s nice. Jesse’s elbow-deep in her neck, his legs trapped in her body. He pulls back all of a sudden, his shoulders tightening, muscles straining under his t-shirt. The hulk swivels but can’t throw him; he’s lodged inside of her. The back of her neck bulges out as Jesse’s hands start to emerge.

At last he yanks out a clump of dirt with a shaggy fringe of roots hanging off of it. The hulk collapses, and Jesse lands inside the remnants of her body with a squishy-sounding _thud._ He tosses aside the roots; the long strips of grass are still buried in the amorphous corpse.

“Holy shit.” I pick my way down the rise.

Jesse shrugs. “Not really. This is kind of what I do.” He winces and wraps an arm around his ribs.

“Are you hurt?” I ask.

He straightens slowly. “Yeah, but it’ll heal before long.”

His shirt is soaked through with mud, front and back, as are his jeans. “Um…you took a lot of hits. Are you sure you’re—“

“Del,” he interrupts. “It’s fine. This won’t kill me.”

“The fuck happened?” Ed. “I had to save your ass. Thought you were supposed to be good.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He lifts a hand and grins in genuine amusement. “My claws got stuck.”

I’m wearing boots but still skirt the edge of the river hulk, peering down. “Did you get the baby?”

Silence. Jesse’s staring at me. Ed’s staring at him, then me, then the hulk’s body. I don’t think she knows what’s going on either. “The baby?” Jesse asks.

“Yeah.” I gesture at her. “She was super pregnant. Is her kid dead too?”

Jesse rubs his forehead, leaving a smear of mud. “Okay. First of all, the hulk’s not a she, it’s an it. Technically, I’m also an it, but I won’t get on your ass about that. Second, it wasn’t pregnant. Monsters don’t conceive children. Humans do that.”

“Your mother did,” I shoot back without thinking. Oh, that was rude. He might want to slash my face off now.

Jesse lets out a shallow sigh, wincing again. “Shapeshifters are a poor excuse for a monster. Anyways, my third point is that’s not even how hulks fucking work. It found a smaller hulk and packed the thing into its own body to make itself bigger and stronger. Fuck’s sake.” He steps over the mud and past me. “Let’s just go.”

“Uh-uh,” Ed says. “You are _not_ getting in my truck like that. I just cleaned the seats.”

Jesse halts and looks down at his mud-covered self. Then he grabs the hem of his shirt and peels it off over his head.

Oh boy. He’s got powerful shoulders and he’s cut but not weird-cut like a bodybuilder, and his hips are broad—he’s gotta weigh over one-sixty. There are smears of mud on his skin and over the thick blonde hair that covers his chest and stomach. I realize quickly that I’m staring and correct that but from Jesse’s cocked eyebrow and sly grin I know I was too late.

 _“No!_ You are not riding fuckin’ _naked_ in my truck! And you’re still fuckin’ dirty!” Ed flings a hand out at him.

Jesse tries to wipe himself off with a muddy hand, which does nothing at all. “Sorry. I’ll just shift before I get in.”

Ed presses her lips together, controlling her temper. “You are going to get _dog hair_ all over my seats.”

“Hey, it’s that or the mud, take your pick. I’ll vacuum it afterwards if you want.”

“Whatever,” she grumbles. “Let’s just head home.”

He shifts right there and pads off through the woods. God, that wolf shape is huge. Ed climbs back up to her bag and starts to pack. I follow suit.

“He’s gonna be on the downstairs couch,” she says. “Don’t worry about not waking him up, though. Really, just do your thing.”

Um. “What?”

“Oh.” She snaps her fingers. “Forgot to tell you. He’s staying with us now.”

 _“What?!_ Why? For how long?”

She waves her hand. “Until this whole shit is over.”

“Ed—what are you talking about?”

She pauses for a moment and lets out a long breath. “Okay. So we had a meeting while you were stuck at home. Meredith…thinks there’s another monster king.”

Oh, fuck.

The last time—the first time—we had one was twelve years ago. I was only thirteen so I don’t remember too much. I do remember my dad getting killed, of course. Monsters got violent, even more so than normal. But I guess once we killed the monster king everything went back to the way it was before.

Except now there’s another one, apparently. And I see a problem with this new arrangement. Jesse’s still nearby so I switch to Spanish. Me and Ed are both Mexican although I never actually lived there so I don’t really know the slang. “Hey, Ed. The monster king makes monsters go berserk, right?”

“Right.”

“And Jesse is a monster.”

“Right.”

“Who’s going to be staying on our couch.”

“I don’t know. He said he’d be fine. And Meredith wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

I rise, shouldering my backpack again. Not that I’d tell Ed this but I’m a little excited. There’s not many monsters that _can_ talk to humans, and the ones who _will_ are few and far, far between. So Jesse’s sort of a one-in-a-million opportunity.

He’s also really hot and I wouldn’t mind finding him sleeping on the couch in his boxers on my way downstairs in the morning. Which I am _absolutely_ not mentioning to Ed. Just gotta work on keeping my eyes to myself. Through the trees Jesse is waiting like an omen, silent and still.

Then he starts trotting away with his pink tongue hanging out of his mouth so the effect is kind of ruined. Maybe we _can_ pass him off as a dog. A freakishly huge, scary dog.

I’m kind of looking forward to this. I shouldn’t be, but here we are.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This chapter used to have vampires in it but it's been redone with a better monster. Heavily inspired by my three months on autopsy last year. Enjoy.

I stare at the ceiling.

The fan rotates at the second-highest setting. It’s 8 in the morning and must be 80 degrees already. My AC unit is in the basement but I haven’t dug it out yet.

Maybe it was all a dream.

It _seems_ like a dream. How could a monster be killing monsters? Helping humans? There are no monsters that help humans. Although Ed says he’s been doing it for years, and _Jesse_ says he doesn’t kill people. He’s a werewolf, it doesn’t make sense. Okay, shapeshifters are nonviolent, but werewolves are…animals. Maybe not most of the time, but certainly around the full moon.

I guess we’ll see in a week or two then. I roll over and pull on a pair of athletic shorts. My back feels damp from lying in bed sweating. Ugh.

As I’m coming down the stairs I spot Jesse asleep on the couch, just like I daydreamed about on the car ride home yesterday. His hair is messy, one leg propped up on the arm of the couch, the other splayed over the side. His thighs are…muscular. Just like the rest of him, to be honest. His chest rises and falls shallowly, and his skin shines a little with sweat under the fine dark blonde hair.

It’s probably bad to be salivating over a werewolf but I’m a twenty-five year old virgin so it is hard to help myself.

Jesse’s eyes are slitted open and watching me. Oh, fuck. I jerk backwards, decide it’s far too late to hide, and continue down the stairs as if I have not been ogling his sleeping body. “Uh—morning.”

Jesse sits up slowly, rubbing his face. “Don’t let the good looks fool you.” He rises and stretches his arms above his head, shivering. “Part of being a werewolf. If you’re attractive humans like you better.” He heads into the kitchen. “Makes it easier to hurt them later.”

The sounds of shuffling, cabinets opening. I stay right where I am, fingers tight around the banister. That was…about as blunt a warning as I could get. Does he hurt people? He doesn’t kill them. But there’s a lot you can do before crossing that line. That’s the whole point of monsters, after all, to hurt humans. Because some kill, yes, in an unknowable myriad of fantastically gruesome ways, but not all of them do. Their methods are too many to name—panic, despair, madness, some subtler, like guilt, shame, self-disgust. So Jesse…I don’t know. He doesn’t have to be the sum of his parts. He could be something new. He’s _definitely_ a monster, is the thing I seem to be failing to grasp. Because I’m still attracted to him and I still want to get closer to him, even though undoubtedly all I’m doing is making it easier for him to hurt me—

Jesse’s face appears around the dividing wall, wearing a faintly embarrassed grin. “Uh…I just realized how dramatic that sounded. Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. Just, you know. That’s the werewolf method. In case you were curious.” He points a thumb over his shoulder. “Want some coffee? It’s brewing.”

Then he disappears again.

Okay.

Well, now it would just be rude not to accept, so I follow him into the kitchen. He’s by the window, turning on the fan. A warm but still welcome breeze flows over me. 

“How are you feeling today?” I ask.

“Pretty good. Still sore, but nothing’s broken anymore.” He rests a hand on his ribs.

“That was fast.”

“Hm. Faster when the moon’s not so weak.”

“Yeah. About that.” I pull up a stool and sit at the island. “So you don’t turn into a wolfman.”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Unfortunately?”

“Come on, if I have to deal with the fucking moon, the least I could get is a transformation. But no, I don’t.”

“Okay, so do you still, you know. Go berserk?”

He shakes his head. “No, I can control it pretty well. Just turn into an asshole, mostly.”

“An asshole.”

“Yeah. I start to _really_ hate humans. More than normal.”

I rest my chin on my hand. “So being a monster makes you hate humans.”

He shrugs. “Well, for the most part, but they’re still annoying on the new moon so I think some of it is just me.”

“Yeah, I feel that,” I sigh.

He grins, then goes in the cabinets and comes up with a pair of mugs.

The coffee is done before long. I spy on his mug, which he probably notices but I don’t care. Lots of cream, no sugar. We settle down at the island. We’re both half-naked and he’s sitting very close to me. God, he’s built. Wonder if that comes with the monster thing too.

We don’t speak. He doesn’t seem like the type who needs to fill silence with small talk. Instead he watches the bird feeder, and I find my gaze alternately drawn there (sparrows and juncos, a goldfinch or two) and back to him. The way his fingers are tucked around the mug, how the breeze from the fan makes his hair flutter. His beard is a bit of a mess from having just woken up. The silence is nice.

But I’m nosy so I break it. “Ed said you’ve worked with her before.”

He blinks, rousing. “Yeah, once or twice.”

“So, did you _do_ something? Why doesn’t she like you”

Jesse glances over, lifting an eyebrow. “Why would she?”

“I don’t know.” I set my mug down. Hot coffee is somewhat less appetizing on a summer’s day. “I don’t think you’re that bad.”

He lets out a low, amused chuckle. “That’s gonna change. But yeah, I mostly work by myself unless it’s something really big.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“You know. A couple jobs now and then. Monsters making noise, I make them go away.”

“You kill them.”

“Uh…most of the time.”

“You _let them get away?”_

He raises his hands. “Hey, sometimes they just need me to tell ‘em to kill less people.”

“Does Niles know you let them get away?” My grandfather. He might not be in charge anymore, I don’t know. He’s getting demented.

Jesse levels his gaze at me. “I’m trying not to burn all my goddamn bridges.”

I rub my eyes. “You have bridges.”

“I’m a fucking werewolf, what do you expect? I do jobs so you all don’t fucking come after me. And if Niles or Meredith or whoever decides I’m not pulling my weight then I need somewhere to go.”

“Why would they come after you? You don’t kill people.”

“Because they don’t fucking like monsters, Del. Come on, you know them.” His lip curls.

That’s true. But something doesn’t make sense. “Wait, so—why are you working with us now? We kill monsters basically every month, won’t that burn all those bridges you’re trying to preserve?”

Jesse grimaces. “Yeah. Well, I kinda fucked things up already.”

“With…your monster connections.” I’m starting to put it together. “You did something to piss them off.”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re here for— _protection?_ From _them?”_

“Yeah,” he mutters.

“Oh my god.” I hop off my stool. “Are they coming for you? Do I need to put down barriers?”

“No they’re not. Sit down.” He waves a hand. “If they come after you two, they’re making enemies they don’t want. Me living here is protection enough.”

I sit down again but I’m not satisfied. “Who’s after you? Why?”

Jesse watches me with narrowed eyes. Think I found something he really doesn’t want to talk about. I meet his gaze and hold it. I want to know this. I want to know which monsters he’s made friends with and what he did that made them want to kill him.

Then a door upstairs slams and the stairs creak and Ed appears, tossing her phone onto the island. “We got a job. Oh, coffee. Thanks, Del.”

Jesse stares into his mug. I heave a sigh. “Jesse made it.”

Ed pauses and shoots a look over her shoulder, then continues pouring. “Gaunt hounds.”

“Are you _kidding_ me?” Another dangerous one, but not like river hulks. Gaunt hounds are smaller and easier to kill, but one bite and you come down with cancer. Any type, pretty much, but always nasty. Some people live for two or three years. Most…don’t.

Jesse grunts. “How many?”

Ed dumps sugar in her mug. “Ten or twelve. Hey, you wanna take this one? I hate those things.”

He scratches his beard. “If we wait a week, maybe. Not like I am now. They’re gonna make me sick and that’s gonna slow me down. I won’t get all of ‘em.”

“God, you’re fuckin’ useless.” She stirs her coffee too hard and some splashes over the side. “We can’t wait. They already killed someone.”

“Great. Can we bring guns?” I ask.

“Mm, I mean, we can bring ‘em, but there’s people living nearby.”

Okay, so I just have to be careful. Gaunt hounds aren’t smart, strong, or even fast, but they’re heavy and their bite force is like a crocodile’s. Still, a machete should do it.

“Bring snacks.” She flings her spoon into the sink. “It’s a six hour drive.”

——

The hounds are in Ohio.

I drive most of it and Ed takes over for the last bit. The victim lived in the woods. Died a few days ago so the hounds have probably moved in by now. Jesse stares out the window as the trees pass by. Can he get cancer? Doesn’t sound like it, from the way he was talking.

I think he’s pissed at me. I probably asked too many questions. But he took all those hits from the river hulk for us, the least I can do is figure out how to keep whoever’s after him from sneaking in in the middle of the night and killing him. Except apparently he doesn’t want to talk about it.

I didn’t anticipate a werewolf wanting privacy—reluctance to talk to humans, maybe, but that’s not the sense I was getting. Well, that’s fine. I’ve been studying monsters for twenty years, I’ve discovered two or three alternative kill methods, I’ve built dozens of spells and some of them have even worked on the first try. I’ll figure out how to help Jesse one way or another.

Ed leans over the wheel, squinting at the mailbox numbers. “Almost there.”

Jesse stretches, letting out a huge yawn. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Ed pulls into the driveway. The house is in disrepair, a one-story with shabby wooden siding that’s falling apart. There’s an overgrown lawn with a rusted pickup in the grass and a long-abandoned swing set sunk into the dirt. “Looks like this guy wasn’t doing too great before the hounds got him,” I murmur.

“Kinda the point.” The truck pulls to a stop and Jesse swings his door open, climbing out. “Guy like this dies of cancer, no one thinks twice where it came from. Hm.” He wrinkles his nose.

“What? What is it?”

“I smell them,” he replies. “Smells like death.”

Ed hops out and slams her door shut. “Least we know they’re here.”

Jesse leads the way. It was raining on the way over, and the ground is squishy under my boots. The nearest house is maybe fifty yards down the road so we shouldn’t be interrupted, long as we don’t fire any shots. Ed and I brought guns anyway just in case. Jesse didn’t. Ed offered, but he just looked kinda put off and declined. As we approach I start to smell it too. Fuck, that’s nasty. Not even very strong yet but it’s like a corpse that’s been left too long in the sun. A dozen of the goddamn things? Inside the house it’ll be unbearable.

The windows are dirty and grey, blinds drawn. Jesse grasps the door knob and glances over his shoulder. First turn doesn’t get anywhere. Must be locked. “I can probably—“ I begin.

Jesse turns the knob again and it snaps. Ah. The door swings open.

I see the eyes first. Not because they shine but because they’re bright spots in the shadowed room, gluts of white, bubbled tissue bulging from their sockets. So many. As the dim sunlight struggles to pierce the darkness I can see them lying there, in the atrium and to the left in the living room and to the right in the kitchen. The smell comes next, slapping me in the face and making my eyes water. Ed gags next to me. “Fuckin’ gross,” she whispers.

I’ve smelled bodies that have gone undiscovered for days and this is the same except there’s twelve or so. The hounds gaze at us—like Dobermans, kind of, with the thin legs and the pointed ears, but they’re grey, splotchy and grey and hairless. Pools of liquid spread from under their bodies and stain the floor, clearish and brown-yellow. Thick strings of saliva hang from their mouths. They wheeze and grunt softly, and their sides heave, skin stretched thin over deformed ribs.

Nobody moves for a moment. Then Jesse crouches in front of the nearest one. “Hey there,” he murmurs.

The hound whines, lifting its nose. Then its jaw drops open and a long tongue encrusted with ulcerating plaques flops out. Oh no.

It licks his face. Which is gross enough but the scent of its breath hits me a second later and I buckle, grasping the door frame with an iron grip to keep myself from doubling over. Rotting. I’d forgotten how bad it was. Is it possible to keep this in my memory? Something so wretchedly awful?

“Gross,” Jesse says, although he really hasn’t reacted much to any of this. He grabs its neck and pushes its head back, exposing its chest.

Then he jams his hand into its body. He kind of gets sucked in, but when he yanks back a second later its heart comes with him and the hound dissolves, skin splitting, bilious ash spilling out. Jesse makes a face and drops the heart—not a true heart, more of a fist-sized, malignant-looking mass, yellow-white with tatters of membrane hanging off of it.

Scrabbling as the pack starts to climb to their feet. Okay, here we go.

One of them jumps at Jesse but he catches it midair, staggering back, and hurls it at the next. They both hit the floor with a wet _thud._ He can throw those things? Christ, he’s strong. Oh, they’re coming after me too.

Ed’s already out the door and I follow, backing up and remembering just in time not to trip and fall on my ass down the step. The hounds lumber out. My machete’s already in hand so I swing it as soon as the first one gets close. It smacks the thing in the face, caving in its skull, the bone collapsing under the force. The hound staggers so I seize the opportunity and dive in, jamming the blade into the center of its chest. It starts to dissolve. Another one down. Not so bad.

Five more pour out onto the lawn. Ed swears and readies her weapon.

Well, here we go.

The hounds aren’t very fast but the tree cover between here and the road is pretty sparse and I’d rather some concerned passerby didn’t call in a dog attack to the local troopers. There’s two coming at me now so I play it safe, swinging at them and keeping them back, waiting for an opportunity. They’re big, not big like Jesse in his wolf shape, but big. A snarl from inside the house. Don’t think that was a hound.

One of them launches itself at me. I track its jaws with my eyes and swivel, lashing out as it flies past. The machete thunks into it like I just hit a sack of wet sand but it’s enough to throw the thing’s balance off, and it crashes to the ground. That’s my chance. One more swing at the second to ward it back before I step on the fallen hound’s neck and jam the machete through its body.

The ribs cave and the blade sinks in deep but I guess I missed because it doesn’t dissolve. That means I have two options—stay here and finish it or leave my weapon stuck inside its still-solvent body, which would leave me defenseless against the one that’s leaping at my head right now.

I yank the hilt back, tilting the blade, and hit the damn heart because it’s suddenly easier to pull out the machete. Good. If I missed again I’d be dead. As it is I have just enough time to whip the machete up before the second hound tackles me to the ground.

I get the blade in between its teeth, but my back thumps to the grass, knocking the wind out of me. The hound chews at the tarnished steel, but it’s wedged all the way at the hinge of its jaw so it can’t snap down. Sprays of thick yellow saliva spray onto my face. From across the yard Ed shouts _“Del!”_

The hound gurgles, shaking its head as it tries to bite me. My free hand is at its throat and my muscles burn with the effort of keeping it away. One of its paws is braced on my chest. Fuck, it’s heavy. The hound’s teeth are loose in its blackened, pus-filled gums, mobile and twisting against the blade. It lunges, its rotting breath washing over me. I hold it—barely, just inches away—and gag, my eyes burning. Get a leg under its body and shove but it’s too fucking heavy to push off of me. I’m going to get bitten. Another gurgle and some glutinous, foul-smelling liquid is expelled from its throat and splatters on my face. Ed shouts my name again. She’s dealing with a few of her own right now. She can’t help me.

Then a hand appears in my vision, jammed between the hound’s teeth, wrapping around its upper jaw and heaving back. I manage to keep hold of my machete as the hound is lifted off of me and hurled to the ground at my feet.

Jesse.

“Fucker,” he growls. There’s one latched to his forearm. He grabs the top of its skull, crushes it, tears its jaws out of his arm, and throws that one down too. They’re both still alive and I hasten to fix that, diving forward to stab the first one. Straight through the front of its chest so I don’t miss this time. Jesse’s already crouching to kill the second and a third clambers onto his back and bites down on his shoulder.

“Go help Ed,” he says, and grabs the third hound, flipping it over onto its back. Its jaws are still attached and its neck extends unnaturally, dragging Jesse down; he doesn’t seem bothered and shoves his hand into its body, rooting around.

I go help Ed.

She’s doing okay. One of hers is down and there are two more. Our eyes meet over their backs; her gaze flicks to her right. I sneak up on the one to her left. They’re pretty dumb and it doesn’t notice me until I jump on it, at the same moment Ed lunges at the other one. I get my arm around its neck and its legs buckle under me. Awkward to maneuver the machete from this angle but as the hound thrashes under me I get the point of it in the right spot and stab.

Its body collapses beneath me, covering me in disgusting soggy ash. I wrinkle my nose as I rise. It’s dropping from my shirt and off my fingertips.

“Any left?” Ed calls. She’s got a few yellow splatters on her but that’s it.

I turn.

Jesse’s on his knees, eyes closed. He shakes his head. Oh. “Hey.” I jog over. “Are you okay?”

He nods and murmurs, “Yeah, don’t worry about—“

“You’re covered in teeth,” I interrupt.

He’s covered in teeth. They’re stuck in his arms, his back and shoulders, his leg through the denim. “Yeah.” He lifts an arm and inspects them. They’re stuck in the messy wounds, roots red-pink and ragged. Dark red blood stains his shirt and jeans. “I’m fine. Just gotta pull ‘em out.”

“Are you okay? Are you gonna get sick?” I ask.

His eyes flick up, and I get the sense he’s annoyed with me. “This won’t kill me,” he replies.

“All right.” That’s Ed, approaching. “Jesse, there’s no more gaunt hounds nearby? This was the whole pack?” When he nods in affirmation, she turns to me. “Del, you get bit?”

“No.” I gingerly wipe my face. “But, uh…it—it spat this stuff at me. I don’t know if—”

“You’re fine,” Jesse cuts in. “No bite, no sickness.”

That’s a relief. He starts to rise; I help him and he doesn’t protest. The lawn is covered in ash and stinks like a ripe corpse.

I must stink like one too. I change inside the house and stuff my old clothes inside a couple of garbage bags because we have to take them with us, in case the guy’s family comes by to collect his belongings. They won’t be able to explain the ash, or the smell, but that’s not our problem. Okay. That was a nice brush with death. But no one got hurt and that’s what counts. Well, except Jesse but he doesn’t seem to care all that much.

I kinda care, though.

He climbs into the back of the cab with me and strips down to his boxers. I catch Ed’s baleful glare in the rearview as she pulls out of the driveway. He already put down a couple towels before we left for Ohio or she’d be snapping at him.

“Hey, Jesse,” I say.

He glances over at me. “Hm?”

“Thanks for saving my ass.”

“Yeah.” There’s still a few teeth stuck in the hand he used to haul that hound off of me. He starts to pluck them out and drop them on the rubber floor mat.

“It could have bitten your hand off.” It could have. With a bite force like that.

He shrugs. “Grows back. I think.”

“You _think?”_

“Lost fingers. Still got ‘em.”

His lungs are working hard, and faint wheezes ride on his voice. “You’re…sick,” I say. Can already tell he’ll get pissed at me but—

He shuts his eyes, rubbing them. “Be fine. By tomorrow.” A grin. “Do kinda feel like shit, though.”

Multiple gaunt hound bites. I’d be chock full of tumor by now. “You want me to help you get those teeth out?”

His eyes slit open, and he nods.

There’s a mostly-empty box of gloves under the seat. Have to replace those. The road twists and turns so I brace myself on the passenger seat back as I lean over. It’s not just the teeth—he’s torn up from where he ripped the hounds’ jaws out of his flesh, and still bleeding. Hopefully those towels will soak it up.

“Okay,” I tell him. “This might hurt.”

He chuckles at that. Then I yank the first tooth out of his thigh and he hisses, his leg jerking up.

“You have to relax.” I push his leg back down. “I can’t get them out if your muscle’s tight.”

He obeys without swearing at me which is more than I can usually say for Ed. His thighs are covered with the same dark blonde hair that coats his chest and stomach. It’s soft under my palm, which I try not to think about as I’m probing in the ragged wound for more teeth. Some of the muscle is weirdly dense and the wrong color. Tumor.

When all the teeth are out of that wound I go for the first aid kit but he waves me off. “Rag’s fine,” he rasps. Well, that’s cheaper than gauze, and if he’s not worried about cancer he definitely won’t be worried about an infection so I stuff a rag in there and move on.

His hand is next. The teeth have punched through it and the tendons and bones are visible. Personally, I’d be concerned about that. Jesse is not. Then his arm and shoulder, and his back is last; he curls up facing the window, hugging himself. His skin is going kind of ashen-gray. He shivers as I work. I’m trying not to be too harsh, pulling apart the edges of the wounds as gently as I can. Some of the teeth are huge but some are tiny and I have to fish for them in the stringy remnants of muscle, the leak of blood. He twitches and moans when we hit a bump in the road and I jab my finger into the wound by accident.

“Oh, fuck.” I pull my hand out. “Sorry.”

He shakes his head. “It’s. Okay.”

Eventually I can’t feel any more teeth so I sit back and wipe my hands on the towel. “Done, I think.”

Jesse relaxes, turning slowly. His eyes close again, brow creasing. Pain, or something.

“You better put some clothes on,” Ed says from the front. “Don’t wanna get pulled over and have some cop ask why there’s a naked guy in my back seat.”

It doesn’t look like Jesse could raise his arms, much less dress himself. I’m about to offer my help when he disappears and is replaced by a huge-ass wolf. There are still rags tucked into his leg and shoulder but they fall out when he changes.

“What the—“ Ed flings her hand up. “That’s not any fucking better!”

“Ed, it’s fine,” I try. “He just looks like a big dog.” A really big dog. He’s hunched, squished down by the ceiling of the cab. There’s no way he can curl up on the seat—he just won’t fit.

Then he rearranges himself, lying down across the seats, and next thing I know a giant wolf head flops into my lap.

That’s one way to manage it. I instinctively start to pet him because I’m an idiot and then I stop that. He doesn’t snap at me, though. And there’s nowhere to put my hands so I end up resting them on his neck anyway. He is…fluffy. There’s not really another way to describe it, much as I strive to think of one. One of my fingers finds a sticky patch of blood; I move to stay away from the spot.

Jesse sleeps. Ed stops a couple of times for gas or a pit stop and I slide out from under him and he doesn’t even twitch, just snuffles a little when I slide back in. By the time we get home my clean sweatpants are covered in drool. It’s dark out and I’m the one who brings our bags inside and as I toss them down in the hall I already hear the upstairs shower running. Thanks, Ed. Jesse ambles inside and shifts back to close the door behind him.

His wounds already look better—shiny with new flesh, puffy and red-pink. Still ringed with dried blood. “Uh…” I jerk my head. “Do you want the shower first?”

The downstairs one. He nods sleepily and heads for the bathroom.

Okay.

Well, it’s not the first time I’ve almost died, but it might be the grossest. And I’ve certainly never had anyone almost get their hand bitten off to save my life. I know he did it because he needs protection. I know he did it to uphold his end of the deal. Monsters don’t help humans, not without a wicked price.

But it seems like Jesse’s the only one paying it. I felt the way his muscles tensed under my hand when I was pulling those teeth from his back. There has to be something more to this. He doesn’t kill people, isn’t that what he said? Why would a werewolf not kill people? It would be so easy for him. I’ve seen that strength, he could crush my neck in half a second if he wanted to.

He stripped the couch and folded the sheets before we left so I make up his bed again. Then I am drinking a cup of milk when he gets out of the shower.

He’s naked, which, well, isn’t unexpected, I guess, but I’m still super a virgin so although I maintain my voice at a normal tenor I can feel my face going red while I make a mighty attempt not to look at his dick. “Do you need some clothes?”

“No,” he mumbles, and digs in a duffel bag beside the couch. His ass is really, really nice. But then he pulls on boxers and rises and then halts, pointing. “Did you do that?”

The bed. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.” He crawls in, cracking a smile. “Still feel like shit.”

“No problem.” I continue drinking my glass of milk now that Jesse’s mostly naked body has disappeared under the sheets.

“Hey, Del.”

I venture from the kitchen so I can see him. “Hm?”

“Your mom probably told you to be careful.”

“Yeah.”

He pulls the sheet up. “You should be careful.”

Then he shuts his eyes so I guess the conversation’s over. Be careful. I thought she meant about the river hulk.

Doesn’t matter anyway. Caution’s never been my strong suit.


	3. Chapter 3

Jesse’s still asleep when I come downstairs the next morning. I don’t ogle him this time because I have self-control. Ed’s got a class this afternoon so she’s down pretty early (for her, anyway) and I’ve got a tutoring session later; the two of us end up on our laptops, her at the table and me at the island. She teaches a couple different types of martial arts and she likes to keep up with what other instructors are doing. Meanwhile, I’m grading yet more homework (French this time, at least, not Spanish).

It’s oppressively boring and I end up glancing over my shoulder a lot at the living room, where Jesse’s still out. He’s on his back splayed over the couch again.

“Is he dead?” Ed asks.

I sigh and return to my grading. “No, still breathing.”

She grunts. “Shame.”

Okay, that’s it. “You mind telling me exactly what you have against him? He’s gotten his ass kicked for us. Twice.”

“Yeah, that’s his job.”

“Ed.”

She grimaces. “Fine. So the last time I worked with him there was a bunch of us on this nest of gutvines.”

Gutvines. Great. Nominally plants that like to crawl down people’s throats, incubate in their stomachs, and then crawl back out, although they’re less picky about which orifice they exit through. Usually they just make their own.

“And this girl is there, I think her name was Hannah. New to the business, not a lot of experience. And Jesse doesn’t like the look of her. Says it’s hard enough to cover all our asses and we know what we’re doing, he can’t afford to look after her too. But this nest is fuckin’ huge. It takes up a whole goddamn barn, there’s at least ten of us there and we need everyone we can get. So she wants to go in, he’s telling her to back off, we’re telling him to shut the fuck up, and then he just grabs her arm and breaks it.” Ed snaps her fingers. “Twists and she starts screaming. Well, then she can’t fucking go in. Anyways, she needed surgery. It was fucked up.”

“Did you lose anyone?” I ask. “In the nest.”

Ed narrows her eyes at me. “No.”

“Was that because of Jesse?”

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me right now?”

“In the interest of transparency.” Jesse’s voice from the living room. “I should let you know that I’m awake.”

Ed rolls her eyes. “Great.”

“I remember that one.” He sits up slowly, rubbing his eyes. “I was throwing up gutvines for two days.”

She rests a hand on her chest. “Stop, you’re breaking my heart.”

“Someone would have died.” Jesse rises, stretching. “I barely kept all of you alive. I know how much I can handle and I know how much you all can’t.”

Ed slams the laptop shut and comes over to where I'm sitting, staring Jesse down. “You _broke her fucking arm.”_

Jesse stares back. “You were there, Ed. I did the right thing.”

“Call me crazy, but I don’t think you have the best _perspective_ on this.”

Jesse’s jaw tightens, and I watch him tamp down the irritation. “Doesn’t matter. It’s in the past.”

“Yeah, of course it doesn’t matter. You don’t give a shit about us. You’re here to save your own ass. Whatever.” She waves a dismissive hand and heads back to the table to grab her laptop. “I gotta get ready.”

She stalks across the hall into the library and the door slams. Well, this is awkward. “Uh…sorry about that,” I say.

Jesse’s face is still set in anger but he relaxes slowly. “No, it’s fine.” He crouches and digs in his bag. “She’s got the right idea.”

“What, ‘cause you’re a werewolf?” I ask. “But you already said you won’t turn rabid and kill us, so what’s the problem?”

Jesse’s pulling his jeans up but halts; then he starts to dress again. “What do you know about werewolves?”

They’re pretty uncommon these days—I’ve never seen one—but I know something about them. “Well, they look and act normal most of the time, but on full moons they turn into a big scary monster and start mutilating people.”

Jesse’s clothed by now and staring at me like I’m an idiot. _“That’s_ what you think we do? Just—kill at random?”

Oh. “Did I…miss something?” I say weakly.

“Yeah, you could fucking say that.” He shakes his head. “Anything can kill at random.” Jesse heads for the kitchen. “A jealous lover. A grizzly bear. That’s not monstrous. That’s just shitty luck. And it’s not how werewolves work.” The coffee pot’s still on the burner and he pours himself a cup. “The first step is to find a target. Someone vulnerable, who’s seeking validation. Then you validate them. But you make sure you’re the _only_ one who validates them. And then they start falling in love with you. That’s why we’re so attractive, to make them want you. By werewolf standards I’m a three out of ten.” He goes in the fridge and takes out the cream.

“So they fall in love with you. Head over fucking heels. Sometimes it takes a little while so you just avoid them once a month so they don’t see what you turn into. You string them along, you pull them closer to you and further from everyone else. You make yourself their whole world.” Pours the cream into his coffee. “And then you reveal it. _On full moons I turn into a fucking man-wolf hybrid.”_ He snorts in amusement. _“I can’t control it. How can I ever be free from this curse?”_ Twists the cap back on the cream and replaces it. “And of _course_ they want to be there when you change. Because you’re in love, right? How could you _possibly_ hurt them? True love will save you. It’s the only way.

“And then you transform and eat them. The end.” He takes a sip of coffee.

I sit there in silence, not having the slightest idea how to respond.

“Anyway, that’s the method. The manipulation,” he continues. “Because then it’s not random. A grizzly bear eats you, you had a bad fucking day. This way it’s _their_ fault. They didn’t love you enough. They weren’t worthy enough. A grizzly bear can’t do that.”

I know this should be making me sick. But to hear this—how monsters work, which we can only guess at in total fucking blindness, to hear the absolute truth, it’s like he’s just handed me a pearl, shiny and black, that sits cool and heavy in my palm.

“But here’s the thing.” Another sip. “Why do we have to go berserk at all? Why can’t we just lie about that part and stick to the manipulation? It’s fucking stupid. Whoever made us should lose their fucking job.”

Whoever made us.

I lurch forward. “Wait—whoever made you? Someone makes monsters?”

He stills, except for his lips peeling back again, exposing teeth that are just a little too sharp. “Probably.”

Then he turns and plucks the coffee pot off the burner and goes to the sink to wash it. “Who? Who made you?” I press.

A half-shrug. “I don’t know. None of us do.”

The water runs, steam rising from the sink. Someone makes them. That seems important. Does it help? Honestly, I doubt it. We can barely deal with the monsters themselves, let alone whatever builds them. I watch Jesse’s back, his broad shoulders, how he runs a hand slowly through his thick, wavy hair. He looks a lot better than yesterday. Not sick anymore.

“Have you ever done that?” I ask, not sure if I want the answer. “You know…made someone fall in love with you. And then…”

Jesse shuts off the faucet. “I already told you, I don’t kill people.” He swishes water in the coffee pot and dumps it out. “And as a matter of fact, I don’t lie, either, unless a job needs it. So no. I haven’t done that.”

Do I believe him? He says he doesn’t lie, but hey, he could be lying about that too.

But he also almost got his hand bit off for me yesterday. So maybe I believe him after all.

——

“Siren,” Ed calls as she comes in the door, flinging her phone at me.

I catch it mere millimeters from my face. “Careful, you almost whacked my laptop.”

“No I didn’t.” With her free hand she takes down her hair and it instantly expands. The humidity today is awful. “Anyone who’s currently lying on the floor being fucking useless wanna come help me with the groceries?”

Jesse is lain out in his wolf shape directly in front of the fan, his fur ruffled by the breeze. There’s gonna be wolf hair…all over the carpet. At Ed’s pointed question he rises, human-shaped again, and heads out the door.

It’s only been a few days since the gaunt hounds. I pick up Ed’s phone and read the message from Meredith. “Damn. They’re just coming one after another.”

“Yeah.” She deposits her grocery bags in the kitchen. “Monster king. They’re crawling out of the fuckin’ woodwork.”

Jesse reappears, carrying another six bags. “Is the siren male, female, or what”

I scroll down. “Female.”

“So you’re safe. You’re not into women, right?”

Well. Guess I’m kind of obvious. “No, I’m not…” I glance at Ed. Don’t want to say anything but—

Ed leans back against the counter, rubbing her forehead. “What do I need to worry about? Is it gonna sing at me and make me stab you or something?”

“They’re not like succubi, they can’t work that fast.” Jesse sets his share of the load down on the island. “You’ll probably get entranced is all. Might actually be useful, it’ll be distracted.”

“Great. Good to know I’ll be fuckin’ _useful.”_

He grins at her, amused. “Hey, if it were male Del would be the one drooling over it. Luck of the draw.”

“How ‘bout you, huh?” she shoots. “You gonna be trying to hump its leg?”

“No, humans are the only ones dumb enough to get entranced with each other. I don’t write poems about that shit.”

I toss my laptop on the ottoman. “‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate—‘“

“Yeah, like that.” Jesse gestures at me. “Not to mention summer days fucking suck. I don’t—“ He sighs. A little tension had gathered in his shoulders but it drains out. “Never mind. Where’s the siren?”

“Across the state. We should leave tonight,” Ed replies.

“Should I bring my violin?” I ask.

Directed at Jesse. He watches me for a moment, then nods curtly. “Yeah.” Another grin. “It starts kicking my ass, you better come through.”

I return the grin. “I always do.”

“That’s a fuckin’ lie. No offense, Del,” Ed adds airily. “Okay, let’s start packing.”

——

Jesse stares out the window for most of the ride but as we approach Edmonston, Pennsylvania he straightens in his seat. “Oh, no,” he mutters.

I straighten too. “What?”

He leans forward. “Ed, how many people has this thing killed?”

She puts up two fingers. “At least. Might have others she’s working on.”

“Fuck,” he mutters.

Ed glances back. “What? What’s wrong?”

Jesse hesitates.

Killing sirens is simple in theory—as with gaunt hounds, you need to destroy their hearts. The main problem is getting to the heart. I have helped kill a siren before and she was…bigger than she looked at first glance. Also with more claws and shit. So if this one’s especially big and bad—well, Jesse’s five foot eight or so. She straight up might just outrange him. “Will you have trouble with her?” I ask. “We could call for backup, see if anyone’s in the area.”

“No.” He rubs his forehead. “Might need the violin but I can kill it.”

It’s about two in the morning with half a moon in the sky, and Edmonston is dark. Quiet homes line the street until it splits around a wide green, lit by antique-style lamp posts. Center of town.

“Hey, Jesse. Got any ideas yet?” Ed asks.

Jesse’s frowning. “Keep going.”

He’s supposed to know where it is, or approximately where it is. I don’t like how he hesitated earlier. Ed takes us past the center of town, past a fast station, past a Dunkin Donuts that’s still open. Then Jesse leans forward and points. “Up there.”

I squint. There’s a sign: EDMONSTON ATHLETICS CLUB. Ed pulls in.

Creeping through closed public spaces in the dead of night never fails to make me feel like a criminal, which I guess technically we are. But we haven’t gotten caught yet because we’re not idiots. Like we would never go into the actual building and trip the alarm, and it looks like, from where Jesse’s taking us, the siren’s not in there anyway. Instead he heads past the club and around the back, to the tennis courts.

The high chain-link fence jangles when he haps onto it, and Ed and I are halfway up by the time he lands on the other side. “You two should stay back,” he tells us.

Ed swings herself over the fence. “Why?”

I’m the last one, and I land beside Jesse as he scans the courts. Maybe it’s just me, but it looks like his eyes gleam like a cat’s, reflecting the light of the half-moon. “Venom,” he replies.

“Okay. Well, I don’t fucking see her here,” Ed hisses. “You got any more bright ideas?”

Jesse shoots her a glare. “She’s here. Just give it a second.”

We give it a second. And then another few seconds. There are three courts and I’m scanning them and not coming up with anything, just some stray leaves from the dense forest past the other side of the fence, skating stop-and-go across the splotchy green surface as a breeze carries them. The wind picks up a little as we stand there waiting, and the trees bend and rustle.

Then there’s movement at the far corner of the courts that I mistake for leaves at first until it starts to build and resemble something that is definitely not a pile of leaves. I pull out my notepad real fast. Don’t hear anything yet but I need to be prepared for Ed’s sake. And for Jesse’s.

“Katie.” Jesse starts toward her.

_Katie?_

I follow him closely because his warning to stay back is but a vague memory in the face of my curiosity. Ed follows too, although probably not for the same reason. I think I hear it now, a song not like singing but still a song, borne on the wind, maybe. (It’s not really on the wind. Her song doesn’t exist outside my head—our heads, mine and Ed’s, anyone else she chooses to snare.) The siren stands there waiting for us.

Not the seaweed-draped, unspeakably beautiful maiden of lore. Beautiful, yes, but the way a normal person could be. In fact, her hair and skin seem a little too shiny—greasy, almost. She’s naked, as one might expect, and her body approaches what you might see in classical art—pale, with soft rolls of fat at her ribs and hips. Her face is half-hidden behind the curtain of lanky black hair. All in all, not terribly impressive, but of course I’m not the one she’s trying to beguile. Ed actually seems to be doing pretty good. No drool or anything. “Jesse,” the siren says.

He watches her—no teeth or claws this time, just him. “Katie, what are you doing? Did you kill two people?”

A gust of wind blows across the courts and her hair lifts in slow motion, drifting around her as if caught on currents, and strange glints of light play over her body like she’s underwater. “I’m sorry, Jesse. I had to. You know.”

“Fuck.” Jesse grimaces. He looks caught.

“Can you stop it?” She raises her long-fingered hands, pressing them to her face. “I know why you’re here. I never needed to before but I had to kill them this time.”

“I can’t stop it, Katie,” Jesse tells her. “I feel it too.”

The monster king.

“You resist it?” The song is clearer now, and I’m still listening, still writing. Ed’s gone glassy-eyed. “Maybe I can resist it too,” Katie says.

Jesse glances over his shoulder at me. “I don’t think you can.”

That was definitely a signal for me to back the fuck off, so I hook my arm around Ed’s and physically drag her away. She stumbles and falls on her ass and won’t look away from the goddamn siren so it’s slow going. Not writing anymore, just checking my work. The song is repeating.

“Please don’t kill me, Jesse,” Katie says behind me.

“You’re making noise,” Jesse replies.

“It’s not my fault.”

“I know, Katie.”

There’s another rustling noise—not the wind in the trees, something separate, and I look over my shoulder to discover that Katie is no longer just a woman because half of her is a scorpion.

The bottom half, in particular. Her human torso weaves in the air atop a ten-foot thorax and six jointed legs, plus two claws and a huge fucking tail. By this point I’m pretty sure Jesse will need help so I let go of Ed, who’s rubbing her eyes, and flip open the violin case. Jesse leaps at Katie but she snatches him out of midair, lightning-quick, and lifts him in her claw. Jesse growls, slamming his fist down on the joint at the base. Her tail shoots forward and I nearly have a heart attack but Jesse catches it, holding it away from him with both hands. He trembles with effort.

Reading music backwards is not especially easy but the melody, as with most siren songs, is sweet and slow. I am just proficient enough in the violin to play the correct notes with the correct rhythms; it won’t sound pretty, but in my experience it doesn’t need to. I kneel, stick my sheet-music notes in the empty case, put my phone down next to it with the flashlight on, and start to play.

Katie freezes when she hears it. I don’t think she’s very happy with me. And indeed she starts to approach—fuck, those six legs are fast, and I can’t run because I need to see the music and Ed’s still too woozy to help me. I guess I overestimated Jesse’s usefulness in this fight because Katie’s carting him around like a snack she’s saving for later.

But I have to trust him. There’s no other choice. This is the only thing I can do to weaken her. No shouts of warning so I spare a split-second to glance up and find Jesse with his legs wrapped around her torso, smashing his claws into her face. She cries out with a wail that seems to rend the air, that makes my stomach turn and my vision tilt sideways. “Oh, fuck,” I mumble, trying very hard to refocus on the music and also to not throw up. Then Jesse shouts in pain or surprise or something and I look up to find Katie’s tail buried in his shoulder. _Venom._ Hope he’ll be okay. No time to think about it. I have to keep playing.

Then Ed steps in front of me, facing the siren with machete in hand. Maybe she’s feeling better. Not that a machete will do much good against a giant-ass scorpion, but we didn’t really know what to expect coming in. (The last one was half-lion and lions don’t have exoskeletons.) I finish the song and start again from the end. Katie slumps, and her claw falls open, Jesse crumpling to the ground. He curls up, clutching his stung shoulder. Uh oh. Doesn’t look like he’s in any condition to be putting in the killing blow, and I’m afraid if I stop playing for one second she’ll come after us kill us all.

Ed takes a few steps forward. I play louder. Katie’s claws rest on the cracked green court, her head bowed. Ed jams the machete back into its sheath and clambers up onto the thorax; her blade goes in through Katie’s back, and Katie shudders and lets out a high, clear tone, like someone tracing the rim of a glass with their finger.

Then she dissolves into…I don’t know what it is until literally hundreds of scorpions are flooding over my shoes and I make a really, really good effort not to scream. I end up kind of whining and dancing in place but overall it could be worse. Ed’s swearing and kicking the things off of her. Jesse disappears under them briefly, still curled up on the ground. But they seem to be fleeing and are soon gone, vanished into the trees or the rest of the athletic club courts. Ew.

“Fuck!” Ed shivers. “Is it fuckin’ dead?”

Jesse sits up, still clutching his shoulder. “Yeah,” he gasps.

I stick the violin back in its case and rush over. “Are you okay?”

“Fine. Fine.” He shakes his head. “Won’t kill me.”

Doesn’t look that way. “Hm. You said you don’t lie, right?”

His eyebrows shoot up and he gives me a look like I’ve just crossed a line although I don’t know what fucking line that is. “Yeah, and I said I’m fine. It just hurts.”

Ed comes up. “You get stung, Del?”

I jerk my head. “No, I didn’t, but he did.”

“Yeah, I saw that. I got eyes.”

Jesse’s smiling. I rise to my feet. “Let’s just get out of here.”

I clip the violin case closed and sling it over my shoulder again, a little embarrassed. After I clear the fence I hear some grunting behind me and find Jesse struggling on the fence, the stung arm clutched close to his chest. Ed rolls her eyes, reaches down, grabs him by the belt, and hauls him up.

The car ride is quiet for a while. I’ve taken over the driving and follow the directions from my phone. In the back seat Jesse relaxes slowly, the sheen of sweat disappearing from his forehead, the pain easing out of his face. Ed’s eyes flick to him often for, I suspect, the same reason mine do. But I don’t want to say anything yet; Jesse’s still hunched over his arm, grasping it tight.

Eventually, as we draw to a stop at a red light and sit waiting in front of an empty cross street, Jesse says, “I knew her.”

There we are.

“She was probably four or five hundred years old. Hadn’t killed anyone since the nineteenth century. I guess when you get older that stuff kind of loses its shine.” He straightens slowly. “She just ruined marriages, made guys go broke, things like that. I talked her down the last time around.” The first monster king, twelve years ago. “But it’s worse this time. Fuck.”

“Okay, but— _Katie?”_ Ed interjects.

The light turns and I hit the gas. Jesse smiles out the window. “She would change names every ten or twenty years. Human things fascinated her sometimes. She liked to try and explain them to me. Thought I was an expert,” he says. “Had to break it to her that all my firsthand experience still doesn’t really help that much.”

“Firsthand experience?” I ask.

He glances up with a grin. “I went to public school, Del. That’s how I pass so easy. You talk to an actual werewolf, they all come off like fucking sociopaths.”

“Hm.” Ed nods in understanding. “But you’re not a sociopath.”

“I’m a monster,” Jesse counters. “But I’m here.”

“To save your own ass.”

He’s quiet for a second. “Yeah.”

There’s an awkward silence, and I’m not in the mood to rescue Ed because she’s being a dick, so I let it hang there over the hum of the engine, the faint blowing of the AC. Finally Ed breaks it herself. “What did you do, anyway?”

Jesse lets out a long sigh, slumping in his seat. “Friend of mine is a graft. Monster king got to him early, I guess, because he’s been having fun taking organs from animals but all of a sudden he wants to harvest an entire goddamn family. Told him that’s a lot of fucking attention we don’t need, he didn’t listen, we fought, I almost killed him, he almost killed me, he was winning but got scared so he fled and tattled on me, I had to go. And here we are.”

“A graft? Thought you can’t kill those by hitting ‘em,” Ed says.

Jesse shrugs. “I got close.”

“Who’d he tattle to?” I ask.

Jesse’s quiet. “Friends,” he mutters.

“Look, the siren already killed people.” Ed waves a hand. “She wasn’t gonna stop, we had to kill her. Sucks for you, but that’s just the way it is. Shit like this and what your friend did is gonna keep happening until we find where the fuckin’ monster king is hiding.”

Jesse presses a hand to his mouth, gazing intently out the window. “Yeah.”

These stories aren’t encouraging. If this siren could be talked down last time but started killing this time around—if a fucking _graft,_ which we don’t even know how to kill, has decided all of a sudden to get violent—

We need to find the monster king. It showed itself last time, but we can’t just sit here waiting, because this one is round two and it already looks like a more effective model. So we need to find it. I just gotta figure out how.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's probs typos sorry

“Sorry, Del. We don’t even know what to look for.”

Not sure what I was expecting—Niles hates magic, as does my mom and Meredith and everyone else who gets a say in things—so I can’t be surprised that their analog-style searching is coming up empty. I press the phone to my forehead for a moment before responding. “Listen, Mom, you come up with anything, _anything_ at all, let me know, okay? We might be able to do something about it.”

A pause. “Something?”

After all these fucking years. She’s gotten better about the gay thing but _still_ wants to get on my case about magic. “Yeah, something. Also known as better than nothing. I don’t know, Jesse’s supposed to have some kind of connection to other monsters, maybe he can help.”

A rush of static. “You gotta be careful with him. I know it might look like he’s on our side, but—“

“But he’s a werewolf, I get it. I know what I’m doing.”

 _“Del._ This isn’t a joke.”

“I’m fine, Mom. Listen, I gotta go, we’re leaving soon.”

“All right. Good luck.”

I end the call. Strictly speaking we’re not leaving _soon—_ more like in a couple of hours when Ed gets back—but I do still have to pack a few things. There’s a gravemouth in Virginia.

Jesse’s in the living room, curled up in his wolf shape in front of the television. The fan is going full blast, ruffling his fur. The TV’s showing what looks like Planet Earth. I lean up against the dividing wall. “You like watching this stuff?”

He lifts his head, gazing at me; then he’s human-shaped again, sitting there with his legs sprawled out—faintly embarrassed, if I’m not mistaken. “I don’t know. Wolf shape makes me kinda stupid. And easily entertained.”

“Hm.” Not sure how touchy he’ll be about this, so I decide to dive right in. “You mentioned, when we first met, that you’re…that monsters are all connected somehow.”

He eyes me. “Any reason you’re asking?”

“The monster king.” I rub my face. Was up late last night searching for anything that might give us a lead. “We don’t know how to find it. I was hoping you could help.”

“Dead end,” Jesse says. “We are all connected, but my connection’s weaker than most. And anyway—“

“Weaker?” I interrupt. “Why?”

He lets out a long sigh. “Shapeshifter.”

Right. Shapeshifters, by all accounts, aren’t much of a monster. Supposedly they’re often nonviolent, solitary, preferring to live in remote areas where nobody much will run into them. A few have even lived in human settlements from time to time.

“It’s a good concept,” Jesse continues. “Looks exactly like a human, blends in with them well, doesn’t mind living among them for extended periods of time. And it also turns into something with sharp teeth. Problem is, they forgot to put in the part that makes you actually want to kill people.” He rises, lifting the hem of his shirt to let in the breeze from the fan. “Which, I’m pretty sure, is the same thing we all use to sense each other. My mom can barely hear whispers. I don’t get a whole lot myself, especially when the moon’s low. Sorry, Del, but I got no idea where the monster king is.”

“Hm.” Well, it was worth a shot. “Hey…is your mom still alive? Do you know?”

He gives me an incredulous grin. “Uh, yeah, she’s still alive. She lives in Colorado. I go see her every few months.”

My jaw drops. “You—you _visit your mom?”_

“Yeah. She raised me, I’m not fucking rude.”

I know I’m supposed to be wary and shit but that is delightful. “Wow. Never expected the big bad werewolf to be a mama’s boy.”

“Hey.” He jabs a finger at me. “You’re on thin fucking ice.”

But the threat is good-humored and I grin right back at him. “Uh-huh.”

He stretches, exposing a strip of stomach above his waistband. I sincerely don’t think he cares about me staring so I stare a little bit. Just a little bit. “You sure you’re ready for the gravemouth? They’re fast.”

“Yeah, we’ve killed one before. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay.”

“Hey, Jesse.”

“Hm?”

“What’s it like? Being, uh…being connected like that.”

The grin is gone, and he watches me for a moment, then shrugs and turns. “Already told you, I don’t get much.”

“I know, but what’s it _like?”_ I press. I want to know. And it might be important.

He stands there, the fan ruffling his white t-shirt. (There are dozens in his bag. Guess he goes through them pretty quick, considering how often other monsters fuck him up.) His hair, too, the sides and back freshly shaved, the rest thick and wavy and soft-looking in the stream of air. “It’s like…a wide, black ocean. I can feel it at the back of my mind. That’s about the only way I can describe it.”

“A black ocean.” I think about it. “Interesting.”

“I wouldn’t call it that.” He sits down on the floor again. “Gonna take a nap before I have to go fight this thing. Wake me up when we’re heading out.”

Then he’s in his wolf shape so I guess the conversation’s over and it’s time for me to go pack.

——

There’s a chain across the cave mouth with a big red ‘DO NOT ENTER - MAINTENANCE’ sign hanging off of it.

Ed shades her eyes from the sun and points her flashlight toward the cave. The beam bites into the gloom. “So we’re sure this is where it’s hiding.”

“They like moist, dark spaces,” I tell her. “And the bodies were found, what, a hundred yards up the river bed?”

It’s hardly a _river_ bed, really—more like a stream bed if that, a gentle, glittering trickle of water flowing over a soggy strip of mud and down into the cave. “There’s no fuckin’ rope,” Ed says. “The rings are empty. Look.”

Metal rings bolted into the wall—as Ed noticed, free of rope. Not such a big deal for the first bit but I read online that the cave takes a downward tilt and most of the journey involves clambering down a slope of sixty degrees or greater. Without a rope, apparently. I do a fair amount on the rock wall at the gym, but I don’t think Ed’s ever touched it in her life. “Do you wanna stay up here?” I ask.

“Fuck that. Jesse, is it down there?”

He’s frowning at the cave mouth. “I think.”

“You think.”

“I don’t know. Hard to tell.”

“Fuckin’ useless.”

“What did you expect? It’s a goddamn gravemouth. It’s a pile of dirt.”

“With teeth.”

“Sorry. A pile of dirt with teeth.”

“Okay!” I chime in. “Let’s get started!”

“Yeah,” he grumbles, and ducks under the chain. “Ed, you should go second.”

She follows him. “And why the fuck is that?”

“So when you fall, I can grab you and keep you from splitting your skull open.”

“Excuse me? _When_ I fall?”

“The rocks are fucking wet and covered in mold, so yes, _when_ you fall.”

I’m behind them now as well and make another valiant attempt to ease tensions. “Guys! This won’t be easy, so let’s just save our energy for the actual climb, okay?”

Begrudging silence. Good enough. It’s already slippery, and I go with bent knees, carefully setting my sneakers down on the driest-looking patches of cave floor. Ed slips, nearly loses her balance and flails her arms for a few seconds before lurching upright again. In the dark my flashlight catches Jesse’s shining eyes, one eyebrow arched. Ed flips him off. “What the fuck are you waiting for? Go.”

He makes no comment, only advances again.

The cave starts to pitch downward and we change tactics, flipping around to climb properly instead of trying to slide and scrabble down with our heels struggling for purchase. I give the others a little head start. It’s actually not as bad as I thought—damp, yes, but it’s easy to find good holds. The smell of mold is in the air but I’m not finding much under my fingers. Jesse and Ed are slow so I take my time, stopping and listening for any signs of the monster. My flashlight is stuck in the mesh pocket on the side of my backpack, pointing deeper into the cave. Ed’s is jammed into her belt. Jesse…I guess he doesn’t need one.

The incline gets sharper and the going gets even slower. Ed grunts and swears. The rope would be really nice right now. Still, all my practicing is coming in handy—my grip is strong as it’s ever been, and I know just how to jam my toes into a crevice so that it’ll bear my weight. My arms aren’t even tired yet. Then there’s scrabbling from below me and a yelped _“Fuck!”_ and in the beam of my flashlight I find Ed hanging from Jesse’s arm, cinched tight around her waist.

Surprisingly, he doesn’t make fun of her. Instead she gets her grip back beside him and says, “Hey, you can take your hands off of me now,” but he doesn’t reply, frowning, staring at nothing.

“Jesse?” I ask.

“Fucking kidding me,” he mutters. “There’s a choker here. We need to get out. Del, you go, I got Ed.”

I make a quick decision to trust him with that because if there is a choker here—and I’m inclined to trust Jesse on that one too—then I would really prefer not to start coughing up parts of my respiratory tract. I don’t see or smell the smoke but that doesn’t mean there’s none here.

So I hastily flip the flashlight around and start climbing as fast as I can and don’t look back. More grunting from behind me. Ed’s not protesting for once. She knows this is bad news. Stuck halfway down a dark hole with a giant mushroom belching poisonous smoke at us.

It was supposed to be a gravemouth. We’re not prepared for a choker. Well, I guess it is serendipitous that you kill them both the same way—dumping salt on them ’til they’re dead—but the problem is we can’t get _near_ the choker without some heavy-duty breathing filters. There’s a tickle in my throat, and I cough just once into my elbow. Are Ed and Jesse okay? I try and glance over my shoulder to check but my flashlight’s at the wrong angle and I don’t see them. Sounds of coughing from deeper in. No time to pause.

The cave starts to level out and I pump my legs, grabbing the wall to keep myself stable. This is a mess. Is there still a gravemouth here? Will we be in any shape to kill it? I am, and Jesse seems pretty indestructible. But Ed…

At last I stumble out of the cave mouth and spin, aiming my flashlight into the dark. They can’t be that far behind, can they? Jesse said he had Ed, he _said_ he had her. Find myself whispering “Come on, come on,” as I stand there peering into the gloom. Should I go back and help? He told me to go, and how much help would I be anyway, he’s way stronger than me—

At last they appear, staggering, Ed bent and coughing and Jesse not much better. He helps her out onto the leaves and then they collapse together, hacking away. Fuck. “Ed, you okay?” I ask urgently, kneeling next to her.

She tries to swear but can’t get the word out. Instead she hacks up a big gob of spit that lands in her palm. It’s dusky and gray. That’s actually a good sign.

“Sorry.” Jesse grits his teeth, holding back a cough. “My fault. Didn’t catch her fast enough.”

Ed shakes her head. “Fine,” she wheezes.

Not much use prying when they can’t talk so instead I just inspect our supplies (99-cent canisters of salt from the local Save-A-Lot, still right where they were when I packed them a few hours ago) and wait.

After a few minutes Ed and Jesse seem a little more stable and Ed’s the first one to state the obvious. “It’s supposed to be a gravemouth.”

Jesse nods. “Yeah.”

“What was the story?” She looks up at me.

“Just what you’d expect. Body with all its bones crushed, buried under six inches of neatly packed dirt.” I shrug. “Gravemouth.”

Jesse puts up two fingers.

Ed shuts her eyes. “It’s both. Fucking great.”

It’s both.

That shouldn’t happen. Monsters don’t show up in the same place. I don’t know if it’s a territory thing or just their way of keeping their exposure under control—one death in suspicious circumstances draws only half as much attention as two—but it’s a rule that’s as hard and fast as you get with monsters. Until now, apparently. “The monster king,” I say, looking to Jesse.

He nods, then rises, holding out a hand. “Salt.”

I stare. Ed stares. “You—you’re going back,” I say stupidly.

“Yeah.”

“But—it’s still in there! You’re gonna breathe all that stuff in—“

“This won’t kill me,” he interrupts. “Salt.”

“But what if they’re _both_ down there? I mean, the choker just sits there, but a gravemouth—“

He cuts me off again. “I have to go back because I’m the only one of us who can, and the choker has to die, preferably before it kills anyone. Yes, it’s going to suck. Does that matter? Not really. Now please hand me the salt.”

Well, that pretty much addresses all my concerns. I hand over my backpack and he slings it over his shoulders and disappears into the cave again, the darkness closing over him.

Ed’s breathing is fast and kinda shallow, but adequate. I sit with her in silence for a little while, until she can take deeper breaths. She spits in her palm again, peering at it. Less gray. That’s good. Temporary damage that should be gone in a couple of days.

She wipes her mouth. “This is bullshit.”

“Uh-huh.”

“There’s not supposed to be two at once. The fuck do we do about that?”

“I don’t know, Ed.”

She presses a grimy hand to her forehead and shuts her eyes. “Great.”

I squint up at the trees. Shadows and sunlight flutter through the leaves. Nice day out. For us, anyway. I don’t think Jesse’s having a nice day, stuck in a damp dark hole with a choker at the bottom waiting for him and maybe a gravemouth too.

“Good thing we got him, though,” Ed says, kicking one sneaker toward the cave.

“Well—yeah, but he might still be in danger. What if the gravemouth buries him too?”

“He heals super fast, right? He’ll just climb back up tomorrow.”

_“Ed.”_

She puts her hands up. “I’m just saying! Like he told us, it sucks but someone’s gotta do it!”

It sounds fair when she says it like that—when Jesse said it like that—but it still doesn’t feel right. Of course, I can’t do anything about it. If I face a choker without a breathing filter, I’ll die. Jesse, on the other hand…

 _This won’t kill me._ He keeps saying that. And so far, anything up to that point seems fair game. It’s a lot for one man to take on.

Guess he’s not a man, though, so maybe it’s okay. I sit with Ed, the breeze stirring her short, puffy ponytail. She still coughs now and then. I sit and wait. And wait.

“It’s been a while,” I say eventually.

Ed grunts. “Kinda.”

I sit for a few more seconds. Yeah, been a while. “I think I’m gonna go after him,” I tell Ed, standing.

She rockets to her feet. “You’re gonna _what?”_

“It’ll be fine! If he killed the choker, there shouldn’t be any more smoke.”

“What if he didn’t kill it? Not to mention there’s _another fucking monster!”_

“Listen, if I start wanting to cough I’ll come right back up. Okay?”

Ed shakes her head. “No. This is crazy. He’s probably coming out right now.”

“We can’t know that. Ed, I think he needs help.” I put out a hand. “Can I take your bag?”

She watches me warily. “I should go with you.”

That one makes me chuckle. “Ed, you’re already, um, not a great climber, and if you start coughing again you might fall. I know you want to protect me, but just let me do this, okay?”

At last, with a reluctant sigh, she takes out one canister of salt to keep and hands over her backpack. Good. Armed now, I make my way into the cave.

Jesse didn’t bring his phone. That would have made this whole ordeal easier, but he left it in the car because when you’re fighting monsters, phones tend to get smashed or folded or filled with blood. So I’ve got no way to contact him except descending once again, this time paying even more attention to my surroundings—straining to feel the slightest tickle in my throat, or to hear the dry whisper of dirt over stone. The cave cants down beneath me and I climb with care. Nothing, so far. The smell might even be less moldy this time around. Really hope Jesse hasn’t gotten his lungs dissolved or been buried in a shallow grave. If _he_ lost to these things, then I’m pessimistic about my chances.

I hope he’s okay. Dumb of me, I know, because he heals from everything up to and including multiple cancers all at once, but I still hope he’s okay. Shitty that he has to go through all this just to stay safe from his monster associates.

The cave twists and turns, leveling out in places only to plunge down again a few yards later. But I go slow and steady and either time flies or the tunnel’s really not as deep as I thought because before long I hear a weak, _“Del?”_

Oh, shit. “Jesse!” I try to peer over my shoulder. The bottom is right there—I pick my way down and land, finally on solid ground.

Jesse’s sitting there against the wall.

He’s got one hand on his chest, which rises and falls rapidly. I hear a bubbly wheeze with every breath. There’s a canister of salt tipped over on the ground, and scattered across the cave floor are chunks of what look like dried sea sponge—satellites to the huge, orange-brown crater dug into the rock. The choker. It’s covered in salt crystals.

“Dead,” Jesse manages. He makes a face and spits into his hand. I shine the flashlight over and discover several fat, black centimeter-long worms wriggling across his skin.

Ah. I guess the choker really got to him. “Holy shit.” I kneel. “Are you okay? Can you get out of here?”

“Gravemouth was here,” he says. His voice is soft and rough. I imagine it’s hard to speak when your mucous membranes are turning into what’s squirming in his palm. “Hard to see with the smoke. It got my leg. Tried to climb and fell. Decided to sit here ’til I felt better.”

I point the flashlight at his feet. One of them is pointed in a slightly awkward direction. Well, damn. That’ll make things more difficult. “Is it coming back?”

“Tagged it with salt. Might have a few minutes. Ugh.” He spits onto the rock.

“Then let’s move fast. Hang on.” I pull open my pack and dig in it.

There are a few things I pack for every job—extra batteries, duct tape, those water-activated casting strips. I consider one of those for a moment but it won’t hold up to the stress of climbing. Fortunately, we also have bungee cords. I clip one end to my own belt and the other to Jesse’s. “You still have three good limbs, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. We’re gonna have to coordinate.”

He watches me for a moment with dull yellow-brown eyes. “You shouldn’t have come down here.”

“You know, it’s funny.” I sling my bag back on. “Ed said the same thing.”

“She was right.” He plants a hand on the wall and drags himself upright. “Let’s go.”

We begin the ascent. Jesse climbs beside me, and we need to stay even because whenever he’d need the bad leg I have to plant a hand on his ass and shove him upwards. It’s slow going. Boy, I hope the gravemouth isn’t about to pop out of the stone and eat us for breakfast.

“You know I heal, right?” Jesse asks conversationally. His voice is still all fucked up, and it’s hard to hear him over our harsh breathing.

“Yeah, I know.” I squint up, searching for a good handhold, and take a slightly worse one because Jesse needs all the help he can get.

“And there’s a gravemouth somewhere—“ He reaches up and grasps the hold. “—we haven’t accounted for.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not saying it was really fucking stupid for you to come down here.”

I sigh. “It’s nice to feel appreciated.”

“Just a thought. Probably a lot less dangerous if you stayed with Ed.”

“Jesse, I was _trying to help!_ I knew you wouldn’t die but sitting at the bottom of a hole spitting your lungs up into your hand probably sucks! And if the gravemouth fucking got to you, well, you _really_ wouldn’t have been able to climb out of here with _all_ your limbs broken, so forgive me for trying to save your—“ I get my hand under him and shove him upwards. “— _heavy_ ass from getting crunched up and buried! Jesus.”

We drag ourselves out onto a spot that’s relatively horizontal and I sit right down for a break because this climb is not easy. Jesse’s wheezing next to me and I’m alarmed for a moment, assuming he can’t breathe, but when I grab his shoulder and turn him I discover he’s laughing.

“Sorry,” he rasps. “Sorry. You’re right. Still kinda stupid, but you’re right.”

Well, that’s something. I point my flashlight up at the rest of our climb. There’s a lot of it, and I’m climbing for two. Or one and a half. Better take a breather while I can, so I lean up against the cave wall, pulling my knees up to my chest. It’s dark in here. Dark and wet. “Guess it was kinda stupid, huh?”

“Yeah. But it’s okay.”

Jesse only lets us rest for another minute before we’re on our way again. He’s still worried about the gravemouth, and to tell the truth, so am I. Ed should be okay, she’s got good reflexes and a whole-ass canister of salt to throw at it. Meanwhile, the two of us are clambering up a slimy pile of rocks with very little room to defend ourselves.

I’m starting to tire at last. My arms and thighs are burning, my fingers sore. Jesse’s face is tight with pain. He still coughs now and then, and once he does slip and fall, although he manages to grab the rocks and I manage to grab his arm so the bungee doesn’t yank me down, only pulls tight. In the dim light I see his claws extended—not his nails but true claws, his fingertips clubbed and split around them. Cool. “Sorry,” he mutters, and with my help gets back up above me.

At last the cave starts to level out. Jesse’s breathing is…bad. It’s faster than ever, his back heaving, black worms crawling out of his mouth and down into his beard. He wipes them away with disgust and staggers forward. I wrap an arm around his waist just to make sure he stays upright. Fuck, how much does he weigh? With some effort we head towards the dim rays of sunlight that struggle through the gloom.

Ed’s on her feet and running toward us the second we make it out. “Holy shit! You guys okay?”

Jesse collapses so I collapse, crashing to my knees in the leaves. “We’re—alive,” I pant.

“Are they dead?”

“Choker,” I tell her. Jesse turns his head to the side and spits onto the ground.

“So the gravemouth’s still here somewhere.”

I nod at her and notice something is missing. The harsh sound of Jesse’s breathing. He’s frozen, staring wide-eyed into the air.

Then he shouts _“Move!”_ so Ed and I scramble away and a mound of dirt appears beneath where I was just sitting, emerging from the earth. A gaping hole lined with fist-sized rocks leads the way.

There it is.

It’s like a huge, fat lizard made of soil, with a mouth that’ll suck you in if you don’t get out fast. Its body is six feet long, rounded beneath the leaves, but the part you gotta look out for is the tail, another six feet of solid earth that can bat a full-grown person fifteen feet through the air. And it’s coming toward me.

A gravemouth isn’t something you can outrun. They swim through land like sharks through water, so I have about a half-second before it’s on me. On instinct my hand goes to my backpack, but it’s zipped up and I’ll never get the salt out in time. Meanwhile Ed seems to have sprinted in the opposite direction from where she was sitting before, so her salt won’t get here fast enough either. Well, maybe it will only have a chance to break a few of my bones. Maybe it won’t suck me under and flee, spiriting me away to be crushed and drowned in earth in a long, drawn-out death from which I will have no escape. The ground rises under me and I lose my balance, flail, and fall hard on my knees, flipping around to see its glittering, black stone eyes bearing down on me—

“HEY!”

Jesse.

I don’t know how he mustered a shout like that with his throat squirming out through his mouth but it seems to have stopped the gravemouth from advancing on me; instead it turns, surfacing entirely, gazing at Jesse.

He stands, chest heaving, staring the thing down. “Back off.”

His voice crackles like an old record. The gravemouth sits there watching him. At the edge of my vision I notice Ed inching closer to me.

The gravemouth starts to turn back and Jesse shouts, _“Hey!_ I said, _back off_. Get away from him.”

It hesitates, watching him again. There’s a tension in the air stretched so tight I feel it fraying. The gravemouth’s still locked on Jesse, but—somehow I know—not for long. All he’s got is his command and what’s stopping the gravemouth from getting bored and eating me? Jesse’s lips peel back, his jaw grown heavy, his teeth jagged and sharp. So that’s what they look like. The gravemouth twitches its tail.

When it whirls around Ed’s hand is already in my backpack and she flips the canister open and flings salt at the gravemouth. It snorts and hisses, recoiling, and that’s enough time for Jesse to add what he was carrying, and for Ed to dump my other canister on it. The gravemouth thrashes around a little bit but then it starts crumbling and its eyes fall out and that means it’s dead and I’m not going to be eaten.

I press a hand to my chest because my heart is going at least a hundred and forty beats per minute. Ed is already marching over to Jesse. “You can _order monsters around?”_

He winces, kneeling and grasping his ankle. “No.”

“You just _fucking did!”_

“I fucking—“ He coughs. “Talked to it.”

“You talked to it and it backed off.”

He flings an exasperated hand in the air. “If you yell at some guy in the street to stop where he is, he’ll stop. Then he’ll figure out you’re just some random asshole and keep doing what he’s doing. I _talked to it.”_

Ed doesn’t have a nasty comeback for that one. Instead she stands there for a second and then crouches. “You okay or do I have to carry you back to the truck?”

“I’ll shift. It’s fine.”

“Holy fuck.” I’m standing, finally. “Thanks for saving my ass.”

He shrugs one shoulder. “Now I don’t owe you shit.”

I kind of stare at him with my mouth open slightly because I don’t know how to take that until he grins at me. “Relax, I’m joking. Let’s go.”

Then he’s a wolf so I guess we’re leaving.

We run into a family when we meet back up with the trail, and their two elementary-age children definitely look scared as fuck of Jesse’s hulking wolf shape, so Ed rubs Jesse’s very fluffy neck. “It’s okay! See, nice doggie.”

They don’t look assuaged. We pass by them without incident. Jesse’s gait isn’t too bad; he’s compensating for the limp pretty well.

He shifts back when we all hop into the truck and settles in the passenger seat. Still not breathing great but knowing him, I don’t think that’ll be a problem for long. He leans his forehead against the window and shuts his eyes. I pull out of the parking lot and onto the main road.

Ed’s in the back, chin in her hand. “So we gotta deal with twofers now.”

Apparently. This is really bad news. Anytime you don’t know what you’re walking into, it’s bad news.

“Guessing you couldn’t tell the choker was down there?” she asks Jesse.

“It’s a fucking _barnacle.”_

“Hey, hey, no judgement. Just checking.” She chews her lip. “We gotta find this fucking monster king.”

Silence except for the air conditioning, the tires on the road. Jesse’s eyes aren’t closed anymore. He stares out the window at the sun-laden trees.

I’m watching the road, mostly. My attention’s elsewhere.


End file.
